


wanna make a trade | wanna fall in love

by jonphaedrus



Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: F/M, Nagamas, Nagamas 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-23 18:01:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6125275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why?” Elincia asks her uncle, and Renning shrugs, his mouth a tight line, closes his eyes.</p><p>“There are lines,” Renning says, setting one hand on her shoulder, “That cannot be crossed. Things that are...inappropriate. Even if it’s hard, sometimes. Geoffrey is just doing what he has to do.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	wanna make a trade | wanna fall in love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lambentLodestar](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=lambentLodestar).



> nagamas pinch hit for winter nagamas 2k15!

Elincia notices the difference on her twelfth birthday. For the first time, when Geoffrey greets her as she and Lucia emerge into the garden, he does not look her in the eye. Every other time, every other morning as long as she can remember, he has greeted her with a smile, and her name.

Instead, he does not meet her eye, and calls her _Highness_ and bows from the waist. He stands behind her, instead of at her side.

“Why?” Elincia asks her uncle, and Renning shrugs, his mouth a tight line, closes his eyes.

“There are lines,” Renning says, setting one hand on her shoulder, “That cannot be crossed. Things that are...inappropriate. Even if it’s hard, sometimes. Geoffrey is just doing what he has to do.” 

Elincia doesn’t understand, but like many things, it is what she must deal with. Heir or no, she is still royalty, even if her existence is covered and shrouded in lies and secrets. She curtsies to Geoffrey, and calls him _Sir_ and tries not to think about when he used to stumble with her through the undergrowth, covered in dirt and leaves and full of laughter.

 

 

When Elincia is fifteen, Geoffrey bids her and Lucia farewell, and she watches him ride out with her uncle, at Renning’s side, his armour glinting in the sunlight. “I’ll be just as strong,” Lucia swears, her eyes bright, and Elincia bites her lip, closes her eyes.

“It’s awful,” Elincia whispers to Lucia nights later, the other girl flopped boneless next to her on the bed they share. “Watching you and Geoffrey, and Bastian, and Uncle Renning...you all keep going out there, throwing yourselves into Crimea, protecting me, and I can do naught but _sit here_!” True, she has spent years now training with the blade and on horseback, but what does it matter in that she may never leave these castle walls again?

“It’s an honour.” Lucia takes her hand. “Geoffrey has talked of nothing for _months_ , Highness. Going on and on about training with your uncle, so that when he’s done, he’ll be the best knight you could ever have.”

“It’s only a matter of time,” Elincia is in ill-humour, and her words unkind, but she feels them spill out spiteful anyway. “He’ll run off and never come back. Why would he serve a girl who will never do anything but be a mistake?” Elincia closes her eyes. “He’d be better off in the army, where he can be someone. Not sitting here, doing nothing. Becoming no-one.”

“Elincia,” Lucia hisses, and jabs her hard in the side. “Don’t talk like that about Geoffrey.” Her eyes are fierce and bright. “He would do anything for you.”

That’s what she’s afraid of.

 

 

When Elincia is seventeen, someone lets her existence slip and the assassin comes for her in the night, murmuring an apology about the bad timing of all this, with a face she will see years later, fight alongside in combat. He’s above her with knives out when Geoffrey busts down the door, stumbling in dressed only in smallclothes.

His shout is more surprising than his sword skills, and he’s clearly doubly outmatched by the assassin. When the assassin knocks Geoffrey aside with a spray of blood, Elincia shrieks and stumbles forward, falling out of her bed and snatching up his dropped sword, pushing the assassin back more out of surprise than any skill any more surpassing than the boy’s.

However, she holds the man off until her uncle comes running, Renning slamming into her bedroom with naked steel and ire in his eyes, and the assassin is vaulting out of the window and gone then, outmatched.

“Call a healer!” Renning shouts into the hallway, and Elincia tosses the blade aside, stumbles to Geoffrey’s side, and rips her nightdress apart into bandages, shoving them into the wound on Geoffrey’s chest. It’s gushing blood but fortunately doesn’t seem to be very deep, and he looks at her, gasping.

“Princess—“

“Just—“ Elincia sounds hysterical, _feels_ hysterical. “Hold still. Don’t try to talk.” Her fingers shake, and Geoffrey’s blood is all over her hands.

“Elincia,” she stares at Geoffrey, crying as he breathes raggedly. “Are you all right?” The question baffles her, and she shakes her head.

“Who cares!” Her voice cracks. She’s the spare, just a spare, but Geoffrey—there’s nobody to replace him. “You almost died!”

“I care,” Geoffrey whispers, and Elincia wants to throw up the heart that’s planted itself inside her mouth or hit him or cry or all of the above, so she just bites her lip and takes deep breaths and puts pressure on the wound and doesn’t look him in the eye, doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t.

 

 

When Crimea falls, Geoffrey all but tosses her onto her horse. “Geoffrey!” Elincia tries to reach for him, but there’s blood and soot on his face and his eyes are hard, his hands out of reach. “You can’t—I can’t go alone!”

“You’ll get less attention like this!” Elincia grabs his hand where it holds the reigns of her horse, refuses to let go. “Your Highness, please—“

“Promise me.” Her voice is fierce. “You’ll still be here when I get back. _Promise me_ , Geoffrey.” 

“I—“ he glances over his shoulder. The castle is fallen, her parents dead before her eyes, and her uncle no doubt as well. Crimea tumbles apart at the seams, and Elincia holds onto what little she has left. “You have my word, Your Highness.”

As she rides off into the forests and away from every inch of the life she’s always known, Elincia bites back hot tears that burn her eyes like bile, and holds onto hope that she won’t be alone, at the end of the day. That she’ll come back, when all is said and done, and have some fragment of her childhood left, even though now it’s shattered beyond repair.

 

 

When Geoffrey stumbles into their camp, tired and dirt-streaked and _alive_ , Elincia holds him tight in a hug he protests, and closes her eyes.

Thanks the Goddess that this, at least, she can grant.

Thanks the Goddess that _he_ at least is there, still himself, still the same, even after all else is gone.


End file.
